


As the World Falls Down

by 0bviousLeigh



Series: Yuma is a Girl [49]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Gender or Sex Swap, Other, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 12:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14057439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bviousLeigh/pseuds/0bviousLeigh
Summary: She wonders if she’ll ever stop wondering about what Astral did or didn’t understand.





	As the World Falls Down

Yuma is snoozing on the sofa when the doorbell rings. She startles, rubs her eyes and glances at the clock. She wasn’t asleep for very long, and she’s still tired. Chris said she’d be tired like this for a few days.

Michael answers the door and warmly welcomes everyone in—Akari and Grandma have gone shopping, confident enough in Michael’s abilities to watch Yuma that they have left him in charge.

 “Yuma!” Kotori squeaks, rushing over. Takashi, Tetsuo, Cathy, Rio, Ryoga, and Tokunosuke are right behind her.

Yuma manages to smile. “Hey, guys,” She says. Her voice is hoarse, she clears her throat and reaches for her water. Tokunosuke quickly hands it to her.

“How are you feeling?” Cathy asks, kneeling at the foot of the sofa.

Yuma finishes her water. “Better, now that I’m not being pumped full of poison,” she says dryly. There’s an IV in her arm once more, but this time it’s there to give her good things.

“Explain it to us,” Rio says, edging her way past the IV stand and sitting by Yuma’s head. “We haven’t yet heard the full story.”

Yuma presses a hand to her forehead. “I’m not completely sure on all of it either. Michael?”

Michael leans over the back of the sofa and hands Yuma another glass of water. He’s wearing one of her school uniforms because he’s been reluctant to leave her side during the treatment, or so he says. Really, Yuma feels like she’s still on suicide watch.

“Kite called Chris up after he saw Yuma in the hospital,” Michael explains. “He said that she didn’t look like someone who was supposed to be getting better. He snuck a sample of the drugs in her IV and we found out it wasn’t drugs at all. I went to the hospital and disconnected Yuma’s IV, and then I went to find the doctor who had ordered her to be treated. Turned out there was no record of the doctor being at that hospital prior to Yuma’s admission, and when I asked the staff about him, they suddenly couldn’t remember a thing about him.” He sighs, “We’re still trying to find out what happened exactly, but we think it was…”

“Heartland,” Yuma finishes, “And by extension Vector, most likely, since he dealt with Heartland before.”

“Isn’t Heartland dead, though?” Tetsuo asks.

Yuma remembers the body underneath her and she shudders, almost dropping the nearly-full glass of water in her hands. Ryoga catches it and moves it to the table.

“We’re working on that, too,” Michael says quietly. “Anyway I went back to Yuma’s room but she was gone.” He looks nervously at Ryoga. “Thomas tracked her movements by hacking security cameras.”

“I was delirious,” Yuma says, picking up the story where she knows it best. “I was reciting Labyrinth. When Heartland found me he was trying to make me think he knew the story, talking about how Sarah forgot Toby and didn’t I want to be like her? Give him the Numbers, have him take my memories away so I would forget that…” she stumbles over the name, “A-Astral ever existed.” Her hands shake. Rio and Kotori reach for them at the same time and each squeeze one of her hands. Yuma gulps and continues, “I thought about it, for a hot second. But that wasn’t what I wanted. So I stabbed him.”

“Wait, you did what?!” Takashi yelps.

Yuma stares at her lap. “Yeah, I grabbed my pocketknife before I left. So I knocked Heartland down and I stabbed him. First ink came out of his body and then flies. He turned into a monster. Maybe I was still hallucinating.”

“Um, no, I saw the flies,” Michael says.

There’s stunned silence for a few seconds. Yuma goes on, “Yeah then Michael pulled me off of whatever was left of Heartland and carried me home. I went to Akari and told her everything. Then Chris, Thomas, and Kite came over here and got me hooked up with an antidote to whatever the hospital infiltrator gave me.”

It’s been a full 24 hours since then. Yuma’s head is clearer, though her memories of events in the hospital are fuzzy. One thing that hasn’t gone away is the ache in her chest, but that’s not a physical wound. Astral took a piece of her soul when he left, she may never stop hurting from that.

Michael says, “We think Vector ordered Heartland to poison Yuma in an attempt to make her want to give up the Numbers. We have Heartland’s…body, if you will call it that. But you don’t need to hear—”

Yuma talks over him, “Kite and Chris are testing it to see what happened, but it’s decomposing quickly so they gotta keep in a special container or something. He looked fine when he was talking to me, but I think he was actually dead. Then I stabbed his reanimated corpse and he went back to being six months decomposed.” She gets a kind of sick satisfaction thinking about it.

“But…you’re okay, right?” Kotori asks timidly. “You’ll get better from the poison?”

Yuma nods. “Yeah, I will. I’m already feeling b-better,” she stumbles again.

“What did Akari say?” Tetsuo asks. Ryoga glares at him, and Takashi quickly asks a different question.

“Are you going to come back to school, Yuma-san?”

Yuma laughs. “Oh, you can drop the ‘san.’ As for school…not right now.” Maybe not ever.

There’s a brief silence, broken when Cathy says, “Well thank god Yuma wears the boys’ uniform, Michael would be too sexy in a skirt.”

Michael blushes and stammers protests, and Yuma laughs so hard she starts to cry a little. She manages to halt the tears, insisting that she’s okay, and she leans back against the sofa, exhausted.

“Thanks for coming over,” she says, “But I know you all have homework and I’m still really tired. Come back soon, okay?”

They nod, and each of them give Yuma a hug before they leave. When Michael escorts them out, Yuma covers her face and starts to cry in earnest.

 

_Akari had been stunned. “I would hear you in your room, talking to someone…I thought you were on the phone with Ryoga. Does he know that Astral is gone? He must, right?”_

_Yuma nodded. “I was selfish, it’s why Astral’s gone now. I wanted him and Ryoga, and I shouldn’t have. I did so much wrong, it’s all my fault…”_

_“No,” Akari said firmly._

_Michael was crying, Thomas looked like he was trying not to listen, but he had his hand on Michael’s shoulder. Chris was stone-faced as he put the IV needle in Yuma’s arm. They had been present and listening for the last few minutes, but Yuma hadn’t wanted to stop talking, not even long enough for them to set up her poison antidote._

_Akari wiped the tears from Yuma’s cheeks. “How could what happened to Astral have been your fault?”_

_“He separated Zexal to protect me,” Yuma said. “If I had been stronger, strong enough to get all the Numbers, to do it on my own, to be on my own…he thought I was too weak to take 96’s attack. He got hurt all by himself and now he’s gone…”_

_“He would have done it anyway,” Akari says. “He loved you that much. I would have done it, too. You would have done it, if you could have taken 96’s attack by yourself, wouldn’t you?”_

_She would have. She would have, because she loved him._

_“You love him so much,” Akari had whispered, tucking Yuma against her body and holding her while she cried. “That’s it—you let it all out now. You cry and you scream and you rage at the world. You’re hurting so much. My poor baby sister.”_

 

“I knew it.”

Yuma looks up—Ryoga has returned. He squeezes himself in behind Yuma and holds her. She’s too tired and sad to push him away, but she protests. “Stop it, you shouldn’t have to see me like this, you shouldn’t have to comfort me because I lost my other boyfriend.”

“Is that what you think?” Ryoga asks. “Then you’re an idiot, but what else is new? I told you so many times that I didn’t hold your love for Astral against you, or him. Do you really think I would hold your grief against you?”

Yuma sobs. “It’s just so unfair…I don’t even know what happened to him, if he’s…alive or not. I just keep thinking that he can’t be dead. After we formed Zexal, he said that he thought our souls were connected. If he were dead, I don’t know if I would be able to take it. If he were dead…I mean I can’t imagine feeling worse, but if he had died I think I would have, too.” She sniffles. “But if he’s not dead yet, I think he’s close. I think he’s hurt, and I have no idea how to help him. If I could help him. I don’t know where he would be.”

Ryoga strokes her hair. “What exactly did he say to you before he left?”

Yuma’s throat constricts. “‘You must go on, you must go back to your friends and loved ones. And I must go.’ Then he said he loved me more than he ever thought.”

“Go…” Ryoga repeats.

“Vague to the end,” Yuma says. “I want him back, Ryoga. I miss him so much it hurts to even breathe. I would go to the edge of the earth if it would bring him back.”

Then she starts crying so hard she can’t speak, and she cries until she falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

After two days of antidote, Thomas returns and takes the IV out of Yuma’s arm. He also takes a blood sample to check for remnants of poison, but says that she should be fine to go outside, walk around, and try to live again. Michael sticks around, mostly keeping to himself or helping Grandma around the house. He’s not got much to do since he’s watching Yuma, and she’s barely even moving.

Yuma spends three days holed up in the attic, staring at her deck and the Numbers, letting Ponta fuss over her, watching Esper Robin reruns, and thinking about Astral. What would he say, if he was here? Would he understand her grief if Ryoga had died, or gone missing? He probably would have been able to feel it, if they were truly soulmates. He felt her anger in Sargasso, but that was a different story.

She feels like she didn’t apologize enough after that. She still feels terrible about it. And she never told him that she loved how his hair felt against her cheek, when she went to sleep with his head tucked under her chin. And they never went to the Natural History museum together to see the dioramas of how the ancient humans lived, even though she knows he would have loved it. They never went to the Louvre, though she talked about it with him. He never got to see the Great Pyramids at Giza, or the Wall of China, or the Terracotta Warriors. He never got to chew gum and blow a bubble. He never got to try on her uniform or her sneakers or the dress she wore to the WDC ball, even though he expressed interest in trying all of those things on.

If she had known how little time they had together, she would have done more. She would have given him more.

Yuma stands and her joints protest—how long has she been sitting still for? She slides down the fire pole and leaves her room. It’s light out, but she has no idea what time it is.

“Akari?” She calls. Her voice is so hoarse.

Her sister appears like magic. “What is it, sweetie?”

Yuma swallows and clears her throat. “I want a tattoo. For Astral.”

Akari doesn’t really understand, but she signs the consent form at the tattoo parlor. Yuma’s not a great artist, but she can certainly draw the Emperor’s Key from memory, and there are plenty of pictures of her wearing it. She works with the tattoo artist to make sure the printout he uses is to scale. Then the artist asks where she wants it.

“Here,” she says, pointing to her sternum, right over her heart.

The guy doesn’t bat an eye. “The skin there is really thin. It’ll hurt a lot.”

“I know,” Yuma says.

“You’ll have to remove your shirt. Do you—”

He doesn’t even finish his sentence. Yuma tosses her shirt aside and lays down on the bench. She’s just glad she thought to put on a bra when she got changed to leave the house.

The tattoo does hurt, but it’s kind of a relief to have some physical reason for the ache in her chest. She doesn’t whimper, she doesn’t flinch, she just lays there and thinks about how horrified Astral was when she explained tattoos to him. If he were here now, he probably wouldn’t watch.

“You going to come back to get it colored?” The tattoo artists asks as he dabs cream over the finished product.

“Maybe,” Yuma says. “I’ll see how I feel after a few days.”

The tattoo looks really great, actually. This was a good idea, to have the Key and Astral made a part of her forever. Even Akari manages to look impressed.

“It’s pretty,” she says.

Yuma takes a picture of it that night and sends it to all her friends. Their reactions range from pure shock (Takashi) to admiration (Tetsuo).

The day after she gets the tattoo, Yuma wakes up early, dresses herself, and leaves the house. Michael follows her, and Yuma pretends he’s not there. She didn’t ask for the company after all, which is the same way she felt when Astral first showed up.

She goes to the mall, where he first showed up in her duel with Ryoga. She goes to the river bank, the street where they dueled Kite, the museum where they had the tag-duel with Ryoga against the gang leaders. She hesitates there, and thinks about Red and the girls. When she was grieving for her parents, Red took her in. The girls picked her up and gave her something to fight for, a place to channel her grief and rage. She hasn’t heard from them, aside from…

 

_Yuma got a lot of fan mail after she won the WDC and told everyone that Zexal was a stunt. Some of it was cute, some creepy, but one card was all she could have ever asked for._

_It was a birthday card that said “It’s Fine to be Nine” in English on the front, and on the inside was a pop-up birthday cake. There were no signatures, but someone had written something._

_‘Good job, kid.’_

_They didn’t have to sign it for her to know it was from her gang._

 

Come to think of it, Astral never got to meet them either. Yuma gives herself a shake—she left that life behind, she can’t go back to it now just because she lost someone again, that wouldn’t be fair to her or her gang. She goes home. Astral wasn’t anywhere she looked today, but maybe she’ll find some trace of him tomorrow. Until she can figure out how to get to Astral world, this is the best she can do.

She texts Kite that evening. ‘What’s up? How’s Hart?’ She wants to hear that someone is doing well.

‘Fine,’ Kite answers. ‘My dad moved in with us. I’m trying to get along with him for Hart’s sake.’

Yuma smiles, genuinely happy for the first time in days. ‘Good for you,’ she says. ‘Bring him to see me sometime. I miss him.’

‘Will do,’ Kite texts back.

Yuma puts her phone aside. Hart is reconnecting with his dad, and so it Kite. That’s good, they’re moving on, they’re going to be a family. Most of all, Kite didn’t ask her how she was doing. Thank god for that, because she would have had no idea of how to answer.

 

* * *

 

The following day Yuma gets her skateboard and goes to the park. She’s rusty, it’s been weeks since she actually tried to skate (the incident in the airship doesn’t count) and she falls a lot, but just like it did when her parents first went missing, just like with the tattoo, the pain grounds her. She wonders if Astral ever really understood that. She wonders if she’ll ever stop wondering about what Astral did or didn’t understand.

She’s on her way to check for Astral, moseying along on her board, and she knows she’s being watched, but she doesn’t call them out on it. If it makes them feel better to follow her and make sure she’s okay, let them. Who is she, to tell her friends how to cope? Especially not since she’s going back to all the places she and Astral had life-changing events at.

But then Tokunosuke pops up in front of her and almost scares her to death.

“You just took ten days off my life,” Yuma wheezes, hand over her heart—over her tattoo, which throbs as she presses on it.

“Sorry,” Tokunosuke says, but he’s practically vibrating with excitement, “But it’s done, and I want you to see it!”

“See what?” Yuma asks.

“Something I made,” Tokunosuke says vaguely. “You guys can come too!” He calls behind Yuma.

Yuma hears various squeaks of embarrassment and shushes, and she laughs and turns around to face them—Michael, Kotori, Tetsuo, Takashi, and Cathy. “Yeah, come on you lousy sneaks, let’s all go.”

Tokunosuke takes them to the overlook at the river. There’s some kind of glass sculpture there, with flowers around it. Tokunosuke kneels in front of the sculpture.

“What do you think?” He asks. “I made it for Astral.”

Yuma’s jaw drops. “You…you made this?”

Tokunosuke turns to the sculpture. “When we first saw Astral, it was because a beam of light came out of your key, so I knew I wanted to do something with light. I found these pieces of glass at the recycle plant…they’re pretty, right? I think Astral would have liked the way they looked when light hits them.”

“But what do you mean it’s for Astral?” Cathy asks.

Tokunosuke folds his hands. “It’s whatever you want it to be. A memorial, a gravestone.”

Tetsuo growls. “What are you saying? Talking about a grave like that!”

Tokunosuke’s shoulders shake—Yuma realizes that he’s crying. She kneels next to him and puts her hand on his shoulder.

“It’s just not fair,” Tokunosuke sobs. “I may not have been able to see Astral like Yuma and Rio could, but I still thought of him as my friend. He helped Yuma free me from the Numbers. Because of the connections we made through Astral, we all became friends. If it weren’t for him, I never would have met you guys, I wouldn’t have had all those great adventures, or the memories that make me so happy. And now…he’s gone, and we have nothing to remember him by.”

Tokunosuke wipes his face. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a couple of rice balls. “Astral liked these,” he whispers, laying them at the base of the sculpture. “There. Now…if he’s in heaven, he can eat them. I’m going to come here every day and feed him. I’ll be so happy if he comes back, but if not…at least someone is taking care of him.” He sobs, but continues, “I do this for my granny every day. It makes me feel better. So I don’t care if you guys think it’s silly, or say that the rice balls are just food for the squirrels. I’m going to do it.”

Kotori starts crying. Takashi sniffles.

Yuma pulls Tokunosuke close and hugs him. “Aw kid, it’s beautiful,” she says. She thinks about what Astral said, that the windows in Astral world were all different colors, and the light threw rainbows on the walls. “You’re right, Astral would have loved the light coming through the glass. And this can be whatever we need it to be. It’s not a grave to me, because I don’t think Astral is dead.” She ruffles his hair, tears stinging her eyes. “We all mourn in our own way. For me, I’ll never stop hoping, I’ll never stop looking.”

For a while, they all just sit there and cry. Yuma wonders if they’re invisible, because no one comes to ask why they’re crying. Just a bunch of kids, crying in front of a sculpture.

“By the way,” Yuma says, “Is this even legal?”

“That’s why there’s chains,” Tokunosuke says. “I poured cement into the ground and stuck the chains into it, and wrapped them around the sculpture. No one can move it.”

Yuma laughs. She laughs so hard she falls over. She’s probably drooling. It feels just like how it did when she first faced Numbers 69. Finally she calms down and sits up to meet the shocked gazes of her friends.

“That,” she says, “Is the most me thing that someone who’s not me has ever done. Do you get it?”

Tokunosuke begins to laugh, too. “I do!” He cries.

And now instead of a group of teenagers crying, it’s a group of teenagers laughing.

“You sound like a bunch of hyenas,” A familiar voice shouts.

Yuma once again feels ten days shave off her lifespan. “MOTHER FUCKER!” She screams, turning to face Kite. “I’M GONNA PUT A BELL ON YOU!”

Kite shakes his head. “I’ve been here since you swore you would never stop looking for Astral. Ryoga tells me that you would go to the edge of the Earth for him?”

Yuma’s jaw drops. “When did he tell you that?”

Kite grins at her. “You ready to go to the edge of the Earth?”

Yuma looks over at her friends. They look at Kotori.

“I’m down,” Kotori says with a small smile. “I’m still part of this gang, after all.”

“Go,” Tetsuo encourages. “You have to.”

Yuma gets to her feet. “Lead the way, I guess,” she says.

Kite takes her and Kotori to the shipping docks, where a military-style helicopter is waiting. And Rio is in the helicopter.

“Surprise!” Rio says, waving.

“What the fuck?” Yuma asks. Rio hugs her and Kotori.

“We’ve been working on it since you told Ryoga that you would never stop looking,” Rio says. “Well, Kite was working on it before that, actually. In the South Pole.”

“You’ve been in the South Pole this whole time?” Yuma shrieks at Kite. “Then, you didn’t visit me in the hospital?”

“I did,” Kite says. “I gave Chris the sample of drugs from your IV, remember?”

The helicopter takes off and Kite turns on a TV, but the screen shows a bunch of diagrams and weird, squiggly lines. “When I saw that hit Astral took, I thought he was dead, too. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought maybe he had just gone back to Astral world. I told Chris, and we started working on a way to get to Astral world. Chris didn’t want to tell you, but I don’t do a thing he says, so now you know.” He turns to Yuma. “And then there’s the King’s coins.”

Yuma reaches into her pocket and pulls out her coins. “What about them?”

“When I saw the one at Jinlong’s ruins, I couldn’t help but think that the metal looked weird, but familiar,” Kite says.

Yuma squints at the coins. It’s true, the metal doesn’t look like normal gold.

“I think it’s the same metal the Key was made from,” Kite says. “I asked Gauche and Droite if I could borrow the coin you gave them, and confirmed the metal is not of this earth. Don’t worry, I gave the coin back to them,” Kite adds, seeing Yuma’s look of horror.

She relaxes. “So what, you think the metal can track down Astral world?”

“I think it can make a portal,” Kite says. “The Key held a different dimension inside of it, I think it has the ability to warp space-time, and I think the coins do, too. In fact, I know it. That single coin I examined contained a massive amount of energy. It almost broke my electron microscope.”

“So then…you did all this for Astral, or me?” Yuma asks.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Kite says. “I did it because without Astral, we can’t get the Numeron code, and if the Barians get their hands on that thing, they’ll destroy our world.”

Kite turns back to the screens, and Yuma looks over her shoulder at Kotori and Rio. Rio winks and beckons Yuma closer.

“He totally did it for you,” Rio whispers in Yuma’s ear. “I’m not sure if it’s because he feels guilty for putting you through all that shit before the WDC, or because he likes you.”

Yuma looks back at Kite. “I’m not sure I could handle a third boyfriend,” she whispers.

When the helicopter lands Yuma shrugs off Rio’s offer for a coat. Ryoga is waiting on the tarmac, and Yuma races out of the ship and launches herself into his arms. “What have you been doing?” She demands.

Ryoga holds her tightly. “Anything at all I could to get you back to him,” he says.

Yuma starts crying.

“Break it up, we have work to do,” Kite says.

“Go pop your eyeball out with a screwdriver,” Ryoga says, but the way he says it is almost…

“Is that how you flirt with boys?” Yuma asks him.

“Please,” Ryoga says, rolling his eyes.

The five of them make their way down an impossibly long tarmac, until finally a machine that looks like it came from a sci-fi movie comes into view.

“So here it is,” Kite says. “Chris and I made a dimensional teleporter.”

“Shit,” Yuma whispers. It’s huge, absurdly so. It’s circular, with a hollow center, and Yuma shivers as she looks at it.

“Kite!” Chris calls. They all turn to look at him as he marches down the tarmac. “I told you not to get Yuma involved in this.”

“Why the fuck not?” Yuma asks.

“Because,” Chris says, “I knew you would want to use it and Yuma…we just don’t know what will happen. Even if you make it to Astral world, we have no idea if humans can survive there! And even if you get there, we don’t know if you can get back. Then there’s always the possibility that you won’t come back.”

“But that’s why it has to be me,” Yuma says. “You have to test this thing, and there’s no one with more to gain than me, but so many people have more to lose.” She swallows past a lump in her throat. “When I was in the hospital, and even now when I’m alone, all I can think it that I don’t want to live in a world without Astral. I already feel like I’m dead, without him. If anyone brings him back, it has to be me. He’s part of me, I’m the only one who can find him and bring him back.” Tears spill over her cheeks and she wipes them away impatiently. “Besides, my dad left me these coins, if they can get me to Astral world then that’s practically his blessing for me to go! So there, Chris! You’re not the boss of me!”

Rio snorts. “Oh god, Yuma.”

“She’s right though,” Kotori says. She pats Yuma’s shoulder. “If anyone can boss a dimensional teleporter into working, recuse Astral, and come back in one piece, it’s Yuma.”

“Not that this is a democracy, but you’re outvoted,” Ryoga tells Chris.

“By a bunch of children,” Chris sighs.

“And me,” Kite says.

“And me!” Orbital beeps, wheeling out from behind the machine.

Chris throws up his hands. “Fine. Let the record show I tried to stop her.”

Kite asks Yuma for one coin, and he installs it in the machine. Yuma hugs Kotori and Rio, and she kisses Ryoga. She kisses him several times.

“I’m so lucky to have you,” she whispers against his cheek.

Ryoga strokes her hair. “I’m the lucky one,” he says.

Yuma is suddenly anxious, but she pushes that feeling down—she’ll be okay. But just in case…

“If something happens,” Yuma whispers, “Tell my sister and grandma that I’m with mom and dad.”

“I will,” Ryoga promises.

Yuma finally lets go of him, and he smiles at her. She turns and walks to the machine. Kite waits for her.

“We’ll keep this portal open for as long as we can,” he says. “If it closes before you get back—”

“Oh shut up for two seconds,” Yuma says. “I have something to say to you.”

Kite sighs. “What is it?”

Yuma smiles at him. “Thank you.”

Kite looks thrown, and Yuma laughs. She hugs him, a good hug, her arms around his neck, her cheek pressed to his. “Thank you,” she repeats.

Kite hugs her back. Yuma smiles, tears stinging her eyes once more. She leans back and chooses to listen to the little voice in the back of her head, prodding at her to do it, just in case she really doesn’t come back. She kisses Kite, a quick press of her mouth against his.

She laughs as she backs away. “I don’t believe for a second that you just did it for the Numeron code,” she tells him. He’s blushing.

Still laughing, Yuma runs into the dimensional teleporter. She can hear Rio and Kotori whooping behind her. As soon as she steps into that empty space in the machine, a great whirring fills her ears. She turns back to look at everyone. They’re all smiling, even Ryoga. Light gathers around Yuma, and she cups her hands around her mouth. She’s not sure they’ll hear her, but she screams it anyway.

“YOU REMIND ME OF THE BABE!”

And as the light overtakes her vision, she hears the callback.

“WHAT BABE?”

Then she’s gone.


End file.
